Keeping an ear out for Mei, she snuck into her sister’s bedroom and powered up their father’s ancient old laptop. As she drummed her fingers, waiting for the clunky dial-up internet connection to do its thing, she wondered how Malach was going to react if she found Francesca’s phone number.
Would he want to speak to her?
Would she want him this time?
In effect, Jade was going to hand Malach over to the woman who’d rejected him and gotten him into this mess with Jade in the first place. So how did she feel about that? And what if bringing them together before Malach and Jade underwent the Testing doomed them to fail, and Malach was again condemned?
So many questions.
She refused to allow herself to dwell on her own personal stake in this whole crazy scenario. Namely how she truly felt about the man she’d been chosen to redeem.
She told herself it was a non-issue. She couldn’t possibly be falling in love with Malach after only one night. Right?
Her growing obsession with him was just a result of the great sex they’d shared. Right?
Right.
The laptop’s overworked fan eased off to a less irritating whine. She Googled Beryl Francesca Laureano and came up with mention of a woman by that name who’d co-owned a shop called Mind, Body, Spirit. Mmm. Not too out there for a woman who’d named her daughter Chalcedony after a crystal. Sounded promising.
According to the website, the shop sold New Age stuff and was situated in some obscure little town somewhere in the States. All the links were broken, though, and both a Google search and a whitepages.com search on the shop proved fruitless. Maybe the shop had closed down.
She scanned the Google results some more and found a link to a People Finder website. After a mucking round with name combinations, she finally came up trumps. Not a Beryl Francesca Laureano, but a Mrs B. Francesca Laureano-Owens, listed jointly with a Clive E. Owens.
Married? Uh oh. That couldn’t be good.
There was a phone number available, but she’d have to pay a fee for a search report. She made a face. Perhaps as a last resort. She took a punt, and Googling Clive E. Owens revealed that he owned Owens Dental, and his company had its own website.
Score!
She paused, chewing her thumbnail, her right hand hovering uncertainly over the website link. Should she or shouldn’t she? Taking this any further might be the best thing for Malach. Or it could ruin any chance he had of passing the Testing and freeing himself from the curse.
She clicked the link and waited what seemed like an eternity for the website to load.
She snorted when the homepage loaded and launched straight into a video complete with cheesy audio. “Your smile is forever! A sparkling smile reflects confidence, youth, vitality,” blah blah blah.
She scrolled through the “complete range of oral and dental care services offered all under one roof”. Had to be some photos of the owners and their colleagues, right? What better way to advertise your dental business than by flashing your own perfect pearly-whites all over your website?
Sure enough, when she clicked on the “about us” page link there he was: Clive E. Owens, in all his dazzling-white pearly-toothed glory.
An okay-looking guy. Francesca had pretty good taste in men—if indeed this guy was married to Malach’s Francesca.
She fossicked around a bit more and discovered links to a “smile survey”, as well as PDFs of monthly newsletters. Boy, this guy really went all out with his marketing. She clicked on the latest newsletter headed “Owens Dental celebrates milestone” and came face to face with a photo of Clive and Francesca grinning for the camera during a company dinner.
It was definitely her, the caption said so. Dr. Clive Owens and his wife, Francesca Laureano-Owens.
Jade clicked on the link to give her a larger version of the photo and examined the woman who’d broken Malach’s heart.
She hated her on sight. Slim and blonde. Attractive in a cool, touch-me-not Nordic way. She looked to be in her early forties. Jade snorted. Bet she embraced plastic surgery as enthusiastically as teeth-whitening treatments.
She sensed movement behind her and quickly closed the links.
“I wondered where you had got to.” Malach placed a plate of toast down on the desk beside her.
“I’m just comparing prices for some of the art supplies I’ll need.” At this rate she’d end up like Pieter—an expert at the art of dissembling.
“Have you eaten enough breakfast?” she asked him.
He nodded.
“Good. Let’s go.” She crammed the slice of toast into her mouth.
“What is so pressing that you do not wish to even shower or change?”
Good point. She held a hand over her mouth and mumbled around the remaining toast crumbs. “We need to sort out this falling irrevocably in love business so we can pass the Testing with flying colors.”
“I agree. But how? Love is not an emotion one can conjure at will.”
She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’m well aware of that. Otherwise I’d simply delude myself you’re definitely the one, and we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“And could I be?”
“Be what?”
“The one.”
She couldn’t stop her mouth from sagging open. How was she going to get out of this one? “Well, if love was just about sex, then yeah. You could definitely be the one. I thought we were very, um, compatible in that area.”
His grin was just this slightest bit smug, but the expression in his eyes was serious. “I agree. If love is about compatibility when a man beds a woman, then likewise, you could be the one for me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“That’s so sweet. In fact, it’s probably the sweetest thing any guy’s ever said to me. So thanks.”
“You are welcome. Unfortunately, I do not think Pieter’s Goddess will be satisfied by physical lust. If she were, I am certain the Crystal Guardian would have long ago satisfied the terms of his spell.”
“Yeah. Me, too. But I reckon I have the perfect solution to that sticky little problem.” She held out her hands and he obligingly yanked her to her feet.
“And what might that be?” he asked.
“We’ll pay my Aunt Lìli a visit. By the way, I might have mentioned before that she’s not my real aunt but an old friend of my mother’s.”
“The witch.”
“The very same.”
His hands tightened around hers. “After what I have been through, I am the last man to disbelieve anyone’s claim that they can do powerful magic. But remember, Jade, we are ultimately attempting to fool Pieter’s goddess, and I do not believe a witch’s spell will suffice in this case.”
“Chill, Malach. It’s so simple it can’t possibly fail. I’m going to make sure we pass the Testing by having Lìli cast a temporary love-spell on us.”
~~~
Chapter Nine
Jade and Malach walked the short distance to Lìli’s house, which was located on the whimsically named Fig Tree Street. Jade rapped on the front door. As she waited, she hopped from foot to foot and wondered how Lìli would respond to their plea for help. Despite what she’d said to Malach, she suspected she’d have a tough job convincing her aunt to compromise her principals and cast something as potentially harmful as a love-spell on them. And if Lìli ever found out what Jade been prepared to do to help Mei….
Sweat slid down her spine and her stomach somersaulted. Cursing beneath her breath for not having thought of that before, she slammed up her strongest mental barriers. Here’s hoping Lìli would be so distracted by Malach that she wouldn’t catch a hint of Jade’s sordid little secret.
By the time Lìli opened the door, Jade had managed to pull herself together enough to kiss her aunt’s cheek and hug her, exactly as she always did. “Ni hao, Lìli Yiyi. Ni shenti hao ma?” For Malach’s benefit she said, “How are you, Aunt Lìli?”
“Jade!” Lìli beamed at her. Then her gaze sl
id past Jade to lock onto Malach. “Zhe wei xiansheng shi shui? Who is this gentleman?”
“Zhe shi wo pengyou.” She deliberately made her relationship with Malach very clear by introducing him as her friend. “His name is—”
“Ta shi ni nan pengyou,” Lìli corrected. “He is your boyfriend.” Heavy emphasis on the “boy” in boyfriend.
Beneath Lìli’s uncompromising stare, Jade’s confidence faltered. “No he isn’t,” she said quickly. Then, thinking she might have offended Malach quickly added, “I mean, not exactly. Um, he’s sort of a boyfriend. Like, temporarily?”
Lìli’s lips pursed with disapproval.
“What I mean is—”
Malach saved her from further humiliation by bowing to Lìli, introducing himself, and expressing his great pleasure at meeting a dear friend of the Liang family.
After the death of Jade’s parents, and in the absence of any female relatives, Lìli had taken Mei and Jade under her wing and nominated herself surrogate matriarch of the Liang family. She took this self-imposed position very seriously indeed, even referring to Jade and Mei as her nieces. And, as always happened whenever potential husband-material crossed her path, Lìli only had to glance at Malach for her gaze to light up with the kind of eager speculation that made Jade cringe.
Lìli’s gaze slid to Jade. She cackled with delight, grabbed Malach’s arm, and led him into the house, leaving Jade to trail along behind. She always had been a terrible flirt.
“Ni cong na li lai?” she demanded. “Where are you from, Malach?”
Jade held her breath, wondering what he’d say and what her aunt’s reaction might be. God. They sooo should have concocted a cover story before they—
“I am a warrior of the Styrian people,” Malach said. “I belong to the Shifting Sands fief.”
“A Storm-Rider, heh?”
Malach stiffened and went so still that Jade gasped. The potential for violence crackled in the air and a shiver goosed her skin.
Lìli threw up a hand in a sharp, no-nonsense gesture to halt the questions that had bubbled to Jade’s lips.
Jade bit her tongue, knowing from experience her aunt would reveal as much or as little as she deemed fit, when she was darn well good and ready, and not a moment before. And if she chose not to enlighten Jade or Malach, there was nothing either of them could do about it. Lìli could be as stubborn as a hungry seagull determined to crack a cockle on a rock.
“You know of us,” Malach said.
“I know many things, young man.”
“How?” He loomed over Lìli in what Jade would have considered a menacing way. And Jade was torn between the desire to step between them to protect Lìli from Malach’s anger, and unholy delight that he’d put her aunt on the spot by asking the hard question. She opted for the latter. Go Malach.
“I know of the men dubbed ‘the Stone Warriors’ from my dreams,” Lìli answered, seeming unfazed by any implied threat emanating from the very large and very possibly dangerous man Jade had brought into her home.
“Are you a practitioner of magic like our priests?”
“Faugh!” Lìli spat, obviously offended. “Do not insult me by comparing me to those imbeciles. I am what your people would term a Wise Woman. Unlike your priests, we refuse to despoil our gifts with arrogance and self-serving acts.”
To Jade’s surprise, Malach dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “I do most humbly apologize for the insult, Wise One.”
“Oh, get up, get up! On your feet, Malach. You do not kneel to me.” Lìli’s protest was token at best, Jade thought, observing the delighted sparkle in her eyes. She was flattered and pleased that Malach had shown such deference to her.
Malach rose fluidly to his feet and stood before her, loose-limbed and completely at ease while she gave him a thorough once-over that would have made a lesser man’s balls shrivel. She even went so far as to squeeze his bicep and hoot her appreciation.
“Lìli Yiyi, when are you going to learn to keep your hands to yourself?” Jade couldn’t help saying.
Over Lìli’s head, Malach grinned at Jade, waggling his eyebrows to indicate he didn’t mind a bit being woman-handled—even if this one was a septuagenarian.
“A strong man. A warrior. Hen hao! Good, good. An older man will be very good for my headstrong stubborn niece.”
“Lìli Yiyi!” Jade covered her eyes and moaned, but Lìli only shooed her into the kitchen to play the role of subservient little female whose job was to fetch food and drinks.
“I will be talking to your nan pengyou in the garden, Niece. Don’t be too long with refreshments.” And so saying, Lìli repossessed Malach’s arm and directed him through to the garden.
Jade pressed her hands against her hot cheeks in a vain effort to cool them. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she grumbled at their departing backs.
As quickly as humanly possible, she decanted homemade lemonade into a jug and arranged it on a tray along with tumblers, serviettes and a plate of homemade biscuits. Through the kitchen windowpane, she paused to spy on Lìli and Malach in the backyard garden. They had perched on spindly-legged chairs around the ancient glass-topped table that wobbled precariously on the pocket-handkerchief-sized patch of cobblestones. They were deep in earnest conversation.
Jade would have given her left hand to be able to hear what they were saying. She grabbed the tray and carried it through to the garden to lay it on the table. “Well,” she said brightly, “you two seem to have a lot to talk about.”
Silence greeted her observation. Darn. So much for subtlety. She decided to be blunt. “That was an invitation to tell me what you’ve been talking about, by the way.”
More silence. Followed by the sort of unblinking regard disapproving parents bestow upon a child who’s just committed a public faux pas.
Jade sighed inwardly and gave up. She sat and poured herself a drink. “Lemonade, Malach? It’s homemade.”
“Your aunt has been enlightening me,” Malach said.
“About what?”
“About you as a young girl, Jade. And yes, I would like to try this beverage, if you please.”
She stared aghast at Lìli. “You haven’t been telling him stories about when I was a bratty youngster, have you? Please tell me you haven’t been telling him stories?”
Lìli looked down her nose at Jade, which was no mean feat when she was even shorter than Jade. “I only tell him what he needs to know.”
What sort of a cryptic statement was that? “And what does he need to know, exactly?” She knew she sounded cross but she was feeling very left out of the loop.
“Never you mind, Niece. Now stop pouting and pour the lemonade for our guest.”
Inwardly seething, Jade did as she was told. There was no point in arguing with Lìli. She always won. It was a given—much like the sun rising every morning.
She handed Malach his glass and forced her lips into a saccharine smile. “Would you like a choc-chip macadamia cookie, Malach, dearest?”
“Please.”
He was trying hard not to grin, damn him.
Don’t get too used to this level of service, Malach, she thought at him. I don’t do happy homemaker.
“Jade,” Lìli chided, seeming to read her thoughts—something she managed with discomfiting regularity and even more discomfiting accuracy.
“Lemonade, Lìli Yiyi?” She nodded. Jade poured and handed her aunt the glass. Then she opened her mouth to get straight to the point of her visit.
“I’d like a cookie, too, Niece,” Lìli said, her eyes twinkling as Jade inhaled sharply through her nose in an attempt to hold the frayed edges of her temper together.
“Everyone happy?” she said. “No one have a hankering for anything else? Green tea, perhaps? Or fruit cake? No doubt, if there’s none left in Lìli Yiyi’s cupboard, I can pop down to the corner store and get some. Or perhaps you’d prefer me to head back into the kitchen and bake you a cake from scratch? That’d get me out of your hair for an hour,
so you two could discuss me some more.”
Lìli smiled indulgently. “Retract your claws and drink up, Xiao Mao. If you behave, I will give you what you think you need.”
“And what does that mean?” Jade bristled, preparing to do battle. “Just for once, Lìli Yiyi, do you think you could talk in something other than obscure riddles?”
Malach’s brows knit. Clearly he was intrigued or curious about something. “What does ‘she-ow mah-oh’ mean?”
Lìli chortled. “Xiao Mao means Little Cat. It has been my pet name for Jade since childhood. It suits her, heh?” She leaned over to pat Malach’s hand and winked at him in a conspiratorial manner.
Oh my God. What next? Naked baby pictures?
Malach leaned back in his chair, balancing precariously on its back legs as he raked Jade with an assessing glance. “It suits her very much,” he drawled.
Her brain chose that exact moment to vividly recall sex-session number two in glorious Technicolor detail—the session where she’d gotten a bit carried away and raked her nails down his back before biting his shoulder to muffle her cries. She glared at him, hoping her heightened color didn’t give away her thoughts.
Malach took no heed of her warning. Instead he guffawed, his eyes glinting with amusement. The he rolled his shoulders beneath his shirt in such a pronounced and careful way, that it left Jade with no doubt he’d been recalling the exact same moment.
Jade blushed from the roots of her hair, all the way down her cleavage.
His grin widened.
She hoped those scratches and her teeth marks stung like blazes.
Lìli was watching the exchange with an absorbed expression. Jade schooled her expression and her thoughts to dwell on less intimate matters. If Lìli couldn’t actually read minds—and Jade was ninety-nine-point-nine percent convinced she could—at the very least her aunt was über-perceptive. She read people like an open book and Jade was no exception. And the absolute last thing Jade needed was to sit through an embarrassing comment about Malach’s potential virility. Followed by a lively discussion about the possibility of Jade providing Lìli with children to spoil in the very near future.
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